Category : Roofing Calculator

As a home-owner, a roof calculator will help you while trying to figure out the best way to arrive at a roofing estimate or plan your roof repair. You will be able to quickly and easily determine how much roofing material you need for a specific kind of roof using the roof calculator tool.

Most online roof calculator apps have a simple set of boxes to fill in with details. You will need to measure your roof and have details such as your roof area to plug into the appropriate fields. Since roofs are of different sizes and shapes, this can be a tricky task. You will need to take a series of measurements. If your roof is unusually shaped, try and break it down for measurement into squares, rectangles and triangles, and calculate the area using simple formulae.

Once you type this in and click a button, the script will automatically and instantly let you know how many bundles of shingles you may need to roof it, or how many rolls of roofing are required. If you plan to use roofing felt, then the computation will show how many rolls are necessary.

The size of a roof is presented in “squares”. A square is 100 square feet. Shingles usually come in bundles that will roof one third of a square. This means if you have a roof of 10 squares, you will use approximately 30 bundles of shingles. Roofing felt rolls are available in strips of 3 feet in width and 36 feet in length, and will cover around 1 square.

While only a rough estimate, using a roof calculator will make it easy and fun to figure this out. And it beats the alternative of making a wild guess, or even getting started without a clue and then over-running your budget massively. If you are not still sure about how many tiles or shingles you will need, then contact an expert (or fill in a roof estimate form) and a person more experienced with these things can help you out.

Roof calculators have made things easier for D-I-Y roof repair enthusiasts. But roofing is usually better left in the hands of experts. Apart from knowing how best to handle difficult tasks and working under challenging environments (such as on sloping roofs), they are also able to get sizable discounts on materials and labor. A roof calculator will tell you how much material you will need. But if you calculate regular charges, and then compare them against what a professional can offer you, there will usually be major cost savings to enjoy.

To estimate expenses for your roof, you will need to know the kind of style of your roof – typically gable roofs or hip roofs – and the existence of valleys and dormers. The difficulty of a roofing project will impact the cost, and knowing the roof’s size and pitch are additional requirements to make a fair estimate.

With all this information at hand you can plug numbers into a roof calculator and get a reasonable roof estimate at the press of a “Calculate” button. A roof calculator seems like a magical tool for home owners. In reality, it is a good guideline, but nowhere close to a definitive and final answer.

It is important to correctly estimate the number of shingles needed for a roof and a roof shingles calculator can help quickly and easily compute it. If you buy too many shingles, it will be a waste of money. And if you under-estimate the shingles count and fall short mid-way, you’ll be forced to extend the job with attendant rise in expenses.

Calculating the number of shingles you will need for a roofing project has been made simple with the advent of online roof shingles calculator scripts. Manufacturers sell shingles by the bundle. Each bundle has 3 squares worth of shingles. This means that if you measure the area of the roof in squares (100 square feet), and divide this by 3, you will arrive at an estimate for how many bundles of roofing shingles you’ll need to order.

The first step, then, is to measure the length and width of your roof. Each square of shingles will cover 100 square feet. When you multiply the length and breadth measurements you will get an idea of the roof area. This will need to be covered with roof shingles.

When you divide the area in square feet by 100, you get the number of squares. When you multiply this by 3, you get the number of bundles needed to cover the roof. In essence this is what a roof shingles calculator does.

There are many roof shingles calculators available across the Web, and free to use. All you have to do is type in figures and click a button to receive an instant estimate of roof shingles needed for the project. This information can then be vetted and validated by a professional roofing contractor.

You can estimate how much roofing material you will need for your roofing project by using a roof shingles calculator. For your convenience a roof shingles calculator will round off the estimates and give you the number of bundles of composition shingles you will need to order.

While most roof calculators will make the best effort to ensure you get a fairly correct estimate, it is mandatory that every home owner checks and double-checks the numbers to make sure you are not exceeding or falling short. A roofing contractor will be able to easily verify the validity of an estimate made using a roof shingles calculator.

Roofing projects are best handled by pros. They are not only more accustomed to working on high and sloping roofs, but also they have leverage with suppliers when it comes to buying materials. They can save you money on buying roofing materials, and time by using the best tools to complete the project quickly.

When you deal with a professional roofer, the one area you would be best informed about is the amount of roof space that needs to be covered with shingles. A roof shingles calculator can help determine this easily.

A square footage roof shingles calculator will tell you how big your roof is. All you have to do is type in the dimensions of your roof and the calculator will spit out data you can hand over to your contractor. In roofing jargon, a square is 100 square feet and is used to refer to roofing area. Shingles made of asphalt, fiberglass or composite material usually comes in bundles that cover one third of a square. Roofing sheets come in rolls that are 3 feet wide and 36 feet long, and can cover 1 square.

Roofing felt or tar paper is used to layer a bare wood roof before laying shingles over it. Felt covers pad the surface over which shingles can be seated nicely. A roof shingles calculator will help you estimate the area of roof that needs to be covered with shingles. It will also tell you how many bundles of roof shingles to order.

Roof calculators are useful tools. But they are not infinitely powerful or remarkably accurate. Most roof calculators are planned to include all major kinds of roofing materials. Price ranges that are provided may have a small margin of error. Generic and specialty roofing will have variables that differ in cost across geographic locales, as well as based upon the kind of roof they will be used on. A degree of disparity between what you compute and what your roofing contractor presents to you is only to be expected.

The type of roofing to be installed will also skew the accuracy of a roof calculator. For instance, with shingle roofing a contractor may be able to use existing chimneys or flashing, while for metal roofing this will need to be removed and replaced. So the estimated costs calculated with a roof calculator will be off, because they cannot automatically factor in these variations.

Tear off costs will also differ by the type of roofing previously installed. Flat roofs cost more to tear down than shingle roofs. The process is more complicated for flat roofing, and disposal of the waste is another expense. So a generic roof calculator will be reasonably good at making roof estimates, but not 100% reliable in all respects.

The basic area is not good enough for the calculation of overall roof coverage area. You will also need to add on an extra measure for the overhang of the roof that goes beyond the edge of the house. If you do not include this figure in your reckoning, you will be short on materials when you go to do the roof. It is best to include this roof replacement cost in the beginning rather than pay more for it later.

3. Pitch

The basic square footage and overhang are measurements of the roof if it were level. Assuming you are not replacing a flat roof, you will need to consider the slope or pitch of the roof in your calculations for roof replacement cost.

Pitch is described as the number of feet the roof rises for every 12 feet of distance. For example, a low pitch might be 3:12, a medium pitch might be 6:12, and a steep pitch might be higher than 9:12. These categories are important in determining the number of shingles needed.

A roof shingles calculator can help you compute the roof area in square feet that require replacement using roof shingles. The conventional measure for roof shingles is the ‘square’, which refers to a 10’x10′ area (or 100 square feet).

Different types of roof shingles calculators are needed for gable roofs and shed roofs. The length, width and vertical height of the roof, in feet, is measured and entered into the appropriate fields in a roof shingles calculator. The computation of slope is described in more detail in the article about roof shingles calculator on the roofing blog.

Hip roofs are harder to calculate area for because of the height variability. The slope method of calculating roof area may be used and replaces the height measurement on the calculator. Mixed roofs are growing more common with architectural styles and designer homes becoming the norm. These intersecting roofs create some difficulty when it comes to calculating roof areas.

Dimensions can be taken for a roof shingles calculator from the ground itself, or may be recorded from a ladder. Any measurements must take into account the extra requirement for overhang at eaves. Heights are easier to measure from the end wall in the middle of a gable.

Complex roofs are even harder as they have more than one such variation. Each section of the roof may then need separate computation using a roof shingles calculator. The total of each section is then added together to arrive at the total surfacing area. Other geometric formulae can be used to more accurately estimate the size of roofing area in some of these complex roofs.

In a roof shingles calculator, when you enter the dimensions in feet (or slope as inches rise per running foot), you will get the computed area of the roof. The areas of specific sections of a complex roof are added together to arrive at a final figure. The advantage of using a roof shingles calculator is that it will not only carry out these calculations easily, but also subtract any hidden areas and display only the exposed roof area which needs to be shingled.

A typical roof shingles calculator will help you streamline the estimates for your roof, order the right amount of shingles, and create reasonably accurate budgets for the roofing project.